September 6, 2005--Republican Senator Jim Talent is tied with
his Democrat Claire McCaskill in the first Rasmussen Reports poll
for this Election 2006 match-up. This early election poll finds both
candidates attracting 46% of the vote.

Talent narrowly won his Senate seat four years ago by
defeating Jean Carnahan. Carnahan had been appointed to hold the
seat on an interim basis after her husband died in a plane
crash.

McCaskill currently serves as State Auditor.

Support for each candidate is closely correlated to
perceptions of President George W. Bush. Among those who Strongly
Approve of the President's job performance, Talent leads 91% to 7%.
As for those who Strongly Disapprove, McCaskill leads 81% to
9%.

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Talent leads among men while McCaskill leads among
women.

Generationally, McCaskill does best among those
under 30 and over 65. Talent is strongest among
30-somethings.

As is the case nationally, there is a huge
"Marriage Gap" in the Missouri polling data. Talent leads by 13
percentage points among those who are married (54% to 41%). However,
McCaskill leads by 23 percentage points among those who are not
married (55% to 32%).

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm
specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of
public opinion polling information.

Rasmussen Reports was the nation's most accurate
polling firm during the Presidential election and the only one to
project both Bush and Kerry's vote total within half a percentage
point of the actual outcome.

During Election 2004, RasmussenReports.com was
also the top-ranked public opinion research site on the web. We had
twice as many visitors as our nearest competitor and nearly as many
as all competitors combined.

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports,
has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

The telephone survey of 500 Likely Voters was
conducted by Rasmussen Reports September 1, 2005. The margin
of sampling error for the survey is +/- 4.5 percentage points with a
95% level of confidence (see Methodology)